Watching cable news tonight I am reminded of the strengths—and the weaknesses—of the medium.
Unfortunately, the strength was found in a small-time story, while the weakness, or at least the potential weakness, was found in a big-time story.
The small-time story is the JonBenét Ramsey case. All night, clicking around, I heard a procession of smart lawyers—both as interviewers and interviewees—analyzing the story. They considered all the angles of police procedure: Should the Boulder cops and DA, for example, have gotten in touch with authorities in other jurisdictions to obtain handwriting samples from John Mark Karr? How about DNA samples? Should the Colorado officials have reached out to Karr’s ex-wives, including the ex-wife who says, absolutely, that he was with her on Christmas Day 1996, when JonBenét was murdered? And the lawyers were joined by cops and profilers of various kinds, all of whom seemed sage and knowing about criminals—and most of whom, like the lawyers, seemed to think that Karr was a “wannabe.” That is, Karr might be sick as hell; his own record shows that, as does his “reaching out” to the killer of Polly Klaas and his apparent admiration for Michael Jackson. And oh yes, there’s the four years’ worth of e-mail exchanges between Karr and that University of Colorado journalism professor—what’s up with that?
Anyway, a million leads, a million threads to tease out, a million facets of perspective on the case. I really felt, on Friday night, that I had learned something about the case. Some will say, of course, that the case has been overcovered, yet again, but I prefer to think that the case has been heavily covered, and that we all learned something from such coverage. That is, all those smart brains, all gathered together to noodle on the same problem, came up with some valuable stuff; it’s like a refining process. The ore of the raw story was refined into something valuable, for news consumers. Only time will tell which talking head or pundit produced the best “diamond,” although it seems to me that FNC’s Greta Van Susteren was the first to raise the possibility that Karr’s Konfession was a hoax.
But OK, that’s enough, at least for now, on the JonBenét case—the small story. It’s a terrible tragedy, of course, but it is just one murder among thousands, one death among millions. Cable news, like the news in general, has an obligation—or at least the opportunity—to help people understand their world, and to make sense of it. And while, to repeat, the JonBenét case is terribly sad, it is just one case, from almost a decade ago.
And now to the big story, which is Lebanon. Or perhaps I should say, the “bigger” story; it’s a country where hundreds have died, just in the past few weeks, a place where much of the population, Hezbollah, has been at war with Israel—where many more died.
During the month of fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border, the cable news coverage was certainly intense.
Now that there’s a cease-fire, much of that coverage has diminished. But the story, of course, is as big as ever—it’s the future of the Middle East that’s in play.
Right now, the coverage from Lebanon and Israel can be described as akin to “All Quiet on the Western Front.” That is, the reporters—the ones that are still there—are mostly glad that the fighting is over, glad that they can travel around to more parts of the area, especially Lebanon.
But what are they seeing? Are they getting the story right? We all learned a lesson about how easy it is to fool people with photos—viz. “Reutersgate.” And hats off, again, to “Little Green Footballs” for nailing those fakes first. So now we know that a picture is NOT always worth a thousand words; sometimes the picture can be actively, deliberately, misleading.
The truth, of course, is that reporters aren’t just supposed to report—they are supposed to filter. That’s why they make the big bucks, or any bucks at all. To govern is to choose, quoth George Will, and the same is true for journalism, indeed, for all mental processes.
So let’s hope that journos do some filtering, as well as reporting, from the once-and-future war zone. Let’s hope that they don’t just content themselves with “visuals” of bombed out buildings, in either Lebanon or Israel.
And at the same time, observers and pundits away from the war zone can play a useful role, too, in the same way that the lawyers in the JonBenét case have made themselves useful. That is, with the same lawyer-like intensity, they can ask questions, lots of them, and really force us all--especially our leaders, but all of us, frankly, should be involved--to really think about think about the future over there.
So let’s hope that they drill down, with lawyer-like intensity, on all the myriad questions bubbling out of the Hezbollah War, just as they have for the JonBenét case. Will they, for example, really dig in on the questions of whether Hezbollah has been disarmed? Or where Hezbollah is getting all its money from? And its arms? What do the people of Lebanon think about Hezbollah? And Nisrallah? What’s the political future of Lebanon?
Moving south of the border, what about the Israelis? What about their suffering? What about their investigation into this war? What about their politics?
And in addition, although far from finally, what about the rest of the world? The French? The UN? The US? Other peacekeeping countries?
Lots and lots of questions, all of them important—more important, I hate to say, than a single murder case in Colorado. So let’s hope that the news quantities reflect, even halfway, the proper proportions between the two stories. Even as, of course, cablers keep track of all the stories around the world.
That’s the test for cable news: To keep people entertained, of course, but also to keep them informed. Cable Game will be watching, and keeping score.
